Learning from the Charismatics
Can We Integrate “Speaking in Tongues” and Other Values?
The Three Waves of Modern Charismatic Christianity
Most Christians are either aware of or have been a part of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity of the twentieth century. These theologically conservative groups are reminiscent of the mystical phenomena seen in the book of Acts and identified by what they call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, spiritual gifts, healing, prophecy, and exuberant worship.
According to former Fuller Seminary Professor of Church Growth Peter Wagner, there were three waves of charismatic renewal in the twentieth century. The Azusa Street Revival was a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles, California in 1906. Historians consider this to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century and is now referred to as the first wave.
Some fifty years later, on a Sunday morning in 1959, Dennis Bennett, an Episcopalian clergyman, announced to his congregation in Van Nuys, California, that he had been “baptized with the Holy Spirit” and had spoken in tongues. This marked the beginning of the Charismatic Movement, the foray of the charismatic into traditional churches, the second wave.
Like Pentecostals, Charismatics believe in a baptism with the Holy Spirit subsequent to or after conversion, evidenced by tongue-speaking. But, unlike Pentecostals, Charismatics do not divide into a separate denomination. Thus there are Charismatic Anglicans, Charismatic Lutherans, Charismatic Presbyterians, Charismatic Roman Catholics, Charismatic Methodists, etc. Like Pentecostalism, Charismaticism has spread around the globe.
Wagner calls the Charismatic Renewal of the 1960s and 1970s with its impact on traditional Evangelicals, Protestants, and Catholics, the third wave. This third wave differs from the other two because it did not teach a separate “baptism of the Spirit.” Nor do they view tongues as the initial physical evidence of that experience. They understand that the practice of “speaking in tongues” is present to any believer who is open to the experience. Third-wavers tend to be less intrusive and seek to be less divisive in practicing their experiences and worship.
Is any of this important?
According to the Pew Forum, there are about 279 million Pentecostal Christians and 305 million Charismatic Christians worldwide. This includes over 160 million Catholic charismatics. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians make up around 27% of all the world’s Christians! That’s quite a significant group in terms of numbers, practices, and spiritual energy.
It is important to me because I am a fourth-wave charismatic. I call this fourth wave the integrating of the beneficial elements of the third wave into the progressive integral stage Christianity.
When we talk about “waking up” in ICN, we are referring to a somewhat similar experience as what Pentecostals and Charismatics call the “baptism of the Spirit.” It is mystical awakened spirit-breath-consciousness. I believe the charismatic movement has other valuable contributions to integrate while also releasing the limiting, unhealthy expressions.
Here are five of these valuable aspects: (1) the emotional intensity of a devotional heart, (2) the reality and value of experiences of awakening that occur in charismatic praise, prayer, and ministry (and in ICN’s deep, mystical, meditative prayer and Integral Prayer), (3) the collective energy of those gathered in the intensive awareness of God’s presence in charismatic prayer (and ICN’s meditative prayer in our gatherings), (4) the speaking forth (prophecy) in charismatic ministry (and ICN’s Integral Prayer), and for some, (5) the personal practice of a prayer language.
My journey into the third wave
In my twenties, I incorporated elements of the charismatic stream into my life because of my life-long interest in mysticism. I also introduced this to my church in the 1970s. This resulted in my staid Southern Baptist congregation showing signs of a deeper spirituality while also becoming less conservative theologically. Many experienced a personal awakening that brought new depth to their spiritual lives. Our Sunday morning worship time grew from our initial congregation of 150 into two packed services in our 400-seat auditorium. With our delightful orchestra and thundering pipe organ on Sunday mornings, we continued to sing traditional hymns with word changes to include the divine feminine and gender-inclusive language for humankind. We also sang some of the new worship songs of the charismatic movement. On lively songs, the congregation broke from the traditional “remain perfectly still at all times in church” and enthusiastically clapped their hands in exuberant worship. Many would raise their hands joyfully on majestic hymns and contemporary praise songs. We looked like noisy charismatics – without any public speaking in tongues!
Richard Rohr’s charismatic journey
Many in our ICN community have benefited from the superb writings of Richard Rohr. He has been a wonderful friend to me and wrote the forward to my most recent book. I find it fascinating that Richard also had an early experience leading a “third wave” charismatic group called New Jerusalem.
“In 1971, Richard was assigned to be in charge of the youth retreat program for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. At their first retreat, when Richard finished teaching on the Prodigal Son, the young men began to cry and embrace each other. Richard says, “I moved back; I didn’t know what to do with this. You’d think I’d be grateful that one of my sermons worked! And then they began singing in tongues. I’d never heard someone speaking in tongues before. My mouth fell open. What did this mean? I’d never heard anything so beautiful, and no one was orchestrating it!
“I’ll never forget walking back across the parking lot into the chapel and opening the doors. Now they were all kneeling around the high altar of St. Anthony’s Church, still singing in tongues. They never left the church the whole night.
“The next Friday, many of these boys brought their girlfriends, and it grew quickly by word of mouth. Soon the girls were singing in tongues, too. The next month they brought their parents and grandparents.” That was the birth of the New Jerusalem Community which Richard led for fourteen years from 1971 until 1985. In 1987 he began the Center for Action and Contemplation.
What Rohr shared with Pope Frances
Recently Richard visited Pope Frances in Rome. Afterward, he said, “Sitting across from each other, I shared with him about what God has done in my life – from my beginning as a charismatic, learning the healing power of heart-based devotional prayer . . .”
Richard so profoundly embraced what he calls the “healing power of heart-based devotional prayer” he found in the charismatic movement that it was one of the first things he shared about his spiritual journey with the Pope! He eventually moved from what he calls, using Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner’s term, the “noisy mysticism” of the Pentecostals and Charismatics. He turned to the “quiet mysticism” of contemplative prayer.
Beyond Noisy and Quiet Mysticism
I find that there is a third version of mystical heart-based devotional prayer beyond “noisy” and “quiet.” I call it “relational mysticism.” This is what we practice in ICN. This is when our individual journey of mystical devotion and communion with God finds its most dynamic expression in the collective of WeSpace and ICN.
We express this inwardly through mystical prayer we call “transmission” as we send gratitude and love to God, guides, and one another. We express it outwardly in Integral Prayer in sharing the words, images, visions, and sensations that emerge while in mystical, meditative consciousness.
Prayer Languages
Most Christians have heard about those people who “speak in tongues.” This is often, wrongly, associated with fanaticism and uneducated, primitive behavior. Many do not understand its significance or meaning, including many of those who practice it. This is my attempt to clear up those misunderstandings.
Roman Catholic scholar Kilian McDonnell argues that “one might think of Pentecostalism simply as a prayer movement.” One can pray in their prayer language noisily, quietly, or even silently, praying inwardly. In ICN’s relational mysticism, some of us, while gathering with others, may commune with God silently in our prayer language.
Of the five elements of the charismatic movement noted above that that ICN incorporates, the fifth one, prayer languages, is the only one we have not yet explored in our weekly writings. Here is my understanding and experience.
The New Testament translators usually translate the Greek glōssais lalo as speaking in tongues or other kinds of languages. This gives rise to the modern term for it — glossolalia from Greek glōssa, meaning tongue or language, and lalia, meaning talking. There are thirty-five references to glossolalia or what is commonly called “speaking in tongues” in the New Testament. I think a more accurate, interpretative translation of glossolalia is “prayer languages.”
The most common misunderstanding of a prayer language is that it is a known language. This comes from the report at Pentecost that “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6). I understand this, whatever it was, as a phenomenon of hearing from the listeners, not of speaking from the followers of Jesus.
Glossolalia is not known languages but praying in an “unknown” form that is not “language” in the usual sense. Rather, it is non-conceptual “words” of the heart. The occasional report of a known language is an outlier.
In addition, because of Pentecostals’ dogmatic insistence that this phenomenon is “proof” of spirit in our lives, much bickering and confusion has resulted. Since it is not proof of anything, let me untangle it.
A prayer language serves as a non-conceptual language of devotion. It expresses our heart-focused, devotional relationship with God in a mystical language that is uniquely ours. In my experience, everyone’s prayer language is distinctively theirs, different from everyone else’s. It is not copied but emerges from one’s own inner being in a creative flow.
In this way we can whisper a lover’s sweet nothings to Abba (Father/Daddy), Imma (Mother/Momma), Jesus, Mary, and other beloveds. It is the language of love in the mystical realm and a way to easily enter into a meditative state.
This way of praying never becomes culture-bound or outdated because its fundamental purpose is not to communicate but to participate in the presence of God.
At Pentecost, instead of spending 20 years meditating on a mountaintop to wake up, the assembled followers of Jesus had an influx of spirit-breath-consciousness that moved them to an immediate awakening of transcendence. They erupted into overflowing joy and bliss expressed in glossolalia.
These prayer languages transcend language and yet embody a form of language or mantra. Rather than a mantra one must remember or conceptualize, a prayer language requires no memory or conceptualization.
It is, in one sense, a golden mantra that uniquely emerges from within a person. It is all their own. Its restoration from early church time is one of the primary benefits of the modern charismatic movement.
The Apostle Paul and Prayer Languages
The giant intellect who expanded our understanding of Jesus into the Cosmic Christ wrote about prayer languages sixteen times in his collected letters. Interestingly, Paul says, “I thank God that I speak in prayer languages more than any of you” (1 Cor 14:18).
Since I doubt he actually took a survey, I assume he was saying he used his prayer language quite a lot so they would not think he disapproved of it. And then he lowered the boom, saying they should stop all the noisy tongue-praying in their worship gatherings. It was too much!
He says that in the church, he would rather speak five words with his mind than ten thousand in his prayer language (1 Cor 12:18). This is general guidance to keep one’s prayer language silent when with others.
Our spirit prays while our mind is silent
A prayer language is praying from the beginning edge of the cloud of unknowing. These sounds serve as “words” without conceptual meaning, bypassing the mind and speech centers.
BRAIN SCAN:
Left: Language centers while singing.
Right: Language centers less active while using prayer language
Dr. Andrew Newberg and neuroscientific researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that activity in the language centers of the speakers’ brains decreased during glossolalia. Their lips were moving, the sound was being generated, but the actual language centers of the brain were not as active as usual. It’s like the car was running with no one in the driver’s seat. That’s a great description of a prayer language being from the heart, not the mind.
I find two exceptions to not speaking out loud with one’s prayer language with others. Some have a special gift of singing in their prayer language that others recognize as creating a field of beautiful energy of depth in a group. The other exception is when someone is asked to do so because they have a gift of healing and transmission that is amplified when they pray softly out loud in their prayer language. I have prayed for hundreds of people individually this way.
How I discovered my prayer language
As at Pentecost, some Christians today spontaneously begin to speak to God in their prayer language while alone. Or they may start when they “catch” it from the presence of others singing or praying in prayer languages. I waited around for several years for that to happen to me. But since, back then, I was driving with my emotional brakes on, I was not a candidate for spontaneity.
I finally realized that I could begin the practice myself. I decided to pray out loud while allowing my intuition to give me any “non-word words,” excluding words I already knew in English, Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.
However, I must admit that this whole thing seemed quite embarrassing. I had spent twenty years in school mastering clear and meaningful speech. I was a professional, articulate teacher.
Now I was going to do something silly — talk in nonsense syllables and call it prayer! My ego was skeptical, to say the least. Here was a 30-year-old, highly educated man making child-like baby talk.
Then I remembered Jesus saying something about becoming a little child to really get our spiritual mojo going (Matt 18:3-4). Maybe this was my entrance into childlikeness!
I decided I could press past my embarrassment if I was alone. I went to my car, rolled up the windows, and determined to give it a go. I decided to tell God how much I loved her, using words and syllables I did not recognize as a language. I continued my child-like utterances, staying out of my mind, until I got it! Somehow this expressing myself in non-words to God was a doorway into letting go of my ordinary mind and moving into another state of consciousness! Later, I learned to call it the beginning of a subtle, mystical state.
Now it is a normal part of my prayer life.
Once again, there is no requirement that anyone exercise a prayer language. If this resonates with you, try it. If not, find other practices that open you to higher consciousness and that let you express it in a satisfying way.
For further reflecion . . .
1. Have you ever whispered sweet nothings to a dear loved one?
2. In 2011 Carl Peterson, M.D., a brain specialist, conducted a study examining the relationship between the brain and praying or speaking in tongues. He found that this releases two chemical secretions into our immune system, giving a 35 to 40 percent boost to the immune system. This promotes healing within our bodies. This researched claim about glossolalia appears to be true. What religious claims or beliefs, for or against glossolalia, have you heard or have you had about this phenomenon that might not be true?
3. The Apostle Paul writes, “Likewise, spirit* (divine-human, spirit-breath, mystical consciousness) helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very spirit* intercedes with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).
Have you ever “groaned” that way?
*I leave “spirit” uncapitalized because, in the original Koine Greek, there is no use of upper and lower case letters. Translators arbitrarily capitalize any word they deem to be about God. However, in the Bible, “spirit” is a word applied to both God and humankind.